ISSUES FACED BY LATINOS RELATING TO EDUCATION

ISSUES FACED BY LATINOS RELATING TO EDUCATION

ISSUES FACED BY LATINOS RELATING TO EDUCATION

Education of Latina children in the United States continues to face many challenges. The large and persistent gap between the reading performance of Anglo and Latina children on national assessment, for instance, points to an intellectual and practical problem facing education in the United States. Anglo-American learners generally perform better than Latina children in reading and comprehension assignments, thus impacting negatively on the attitude of Latina children towards education. In particular, female Latina learners are the most affected by the challenges. For instance, unlike their boys’ counterparts, Latina girls born in poor families are expected to help their parents raise their siblings, thus affecting their enrolment in schools.

Literature review

The challenges that young Latina girls face in their pursuit for education has been studied for quite sometime now. While most Latina learners have goals to pursue education like the rest of the learners in the United States, one of the challenges that they face is discrimination from teachers and fellow learners alike. According to a survey conducted by the CNN, it was revealed that stereotypes against Latinas as underachievers and submissive caretakers affect their morale to study in school to pursue their dream courses in college. As a result, many of them drop out of schools and colleges before graduation.

Roberts investigated the educational gender gap to establish the reason Latina girls drop out of schools and colleges. In the study, he created four categories of causes, which included family factors, patriarchal factors, structural factors, and government investments to support their learning. Roberts used four cases to analyze the causal contributions of the factors in the poor completion rates of Latina children. The four cases were Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, and Peru. The study revealed that patriarchal and family factors were the greatest contributors to the high drop rate of female learners from school (Roberts).

In another study, Rodriguez et al. studied the challenges facing Latina college students in the 21^st century. The study had four broad areas: barriers to Latina participation in higher education, factors contributing to the success of high-achieving Latinas, strategies for student and academic affairs administrators to promote the success of Latina students, and the difficulty of labeling ethnic populations and the scarcity of research on Latina population in the student affairs literature. The researchers focused on four Latina women to give them perspectives of the potential challenges to Latina education in the United States. The study established that cultural stereotyping, low socioeconomic status of the families of the learners, under-preparation among Latinas were some of the factors contributing to high dropout rates among Latina students. Besides, Rodriguez et al. also noted that social stress and institutional marginalization also significantly contributed to the poor college completion rates (518).

Carlo et al. investigated the impact of language of instruction on the performance of Latina learners in class. The study was conducted on the background that there are gaps in reading performance between Anglo and Latina students, and this is associated with gaps in vocabulary knowledge. In the study, Carlo et al. realized that the American education system has done little as far as addressing the language needs of Latina students who face challenges learning English as second language (189). Lack of knowledge of the middle- and lower frequency academic words encountered in middle and secondary school texts impedes comprehension of those texts, which in turn impedes the natural process of learning new word meanings from exposure during reading (191). Consequently, the performance of Latinas in class is affected, leading to discrimination from teachers and fellow learners alike, thus contributing to high dropout rates.

In conclusion, the studies above reveal that other than social and family challenges, Latina learners face discrimination from teachers and learners. Besides, institutional marginalization due to the language of instruction used in the American schools, affect their performance, leading to the high dropout rates.

Works Cited

Carlo, Maria S., et al. “Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English-language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms.” Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 2, 2004, pp. 188-215.

Roberts, Elise. “The Educational Gender Gap in Latin America: Why Some Girls Do Not Attend School.” Clocks and Clouds, vol. 2, no. 1, 2012.

Rodriguez, Adele L., et al. “Latina College Students: Issues and Challenges for the 21st Century.” NASPA Journal, vol. 37, no. 3, 2000.

“Survey: Latinas Face Challenges That Hinder Their Education – CNN.com.” CNN International – Breaking News, US News, World News and Video, edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/09/04/lia.latinas.education/index.html.